Social Status Between Men And Women In Jane Austen's Pride And Prejudice

Jane Austen lived in a period at the turn from the eighteenth century to the nineteenth century, which was a period of mixed thoughts, which conflicted all the times. Among all the conflicts, the most important one was the disparity in social status between men and women. Not only men’s status was in the center of the society but also common people thought it was right that men were much more important than women were. In those days girls were neither allowed nor expected to study much because they did not have to work for a living. They were supposed to stay at home and look beautiful in order to get suitable husbands. Jane Austen, especially in Pride and Prejudice has manage to convey that a woman can be intelligent and her intelligence can be very impressive. Elizabeth Bennet is good- looking but Darcy is more influenced by her witty answers and intelligence rather than her beauty. The present paper discuss that how Austen, through her character of Elizabeth Bennet, showed that intelligent woman can succeed in society. The relation of women to culture has historically been different from that of men. Schools and Universities have been until very recently a male preserve, which has effectively excluded all but a handful of upper-class women from the resources of the official culture. Many educationalists as late as the nineteenth century believed that a woman needed to be literate enough to read her Bible, but could not aspire to the arrogance of authorship.